


Late Summer Evenings

by ygrainette



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: But mostly fluff, Canon Era, F/F, Fluff, and a little angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 21:33:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2165943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ygrainette/pseuds/ygrainette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asha's ship returns to Dorne. She's been away too long. Far too long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Late Summer Evenings

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [upshipcreek](http://upshipcreek.tumblr.com) weekly challenge and originally posted [at my tumblr.](http://capricorn-child.tumblr.com/post/94950947730/written-for-upshipcreek-pairing-arianne)  
> Un-beta'd.
> 
> I dearly love feedback.  
> Enjoy!

"How long will you be staying for this time?"

Late summer evenings on the beaches of Dorne. The damp sand hot between her toes, the sweet-sharp smell of orange trees on the gentle breeze, the wavelets murmuring their way into shore. The woman walking alongside her, petite shoulders bracketed by her arm, doeskin-soft fingers laced through hers.

Asha's been away too long. Far too long.

"We're mooring for a week at least. Ten days maybe." It all depends how long it takes them to sell off the goods bought in the Free Cities. Asha has half a mind to delay it somehow. Bribe some of Sunspear's merchants to give her crew a hard time with the haggling.

"Hm." Arianne was hoping for longer, Asha can tell by the way her grip on Asha's hand tightens reflexively. But she keeps her voice light, teasing. "I hope you brought some presents back with you …"

"Of course. There's a whole hold full of Braavosi clockwork toys for your father to give to the children." She's not even joking. Quite what the Prince of Dorne makes of his daughter sharing her bed with a battle-scarred Iron Islander is a mystery to Asha, but so long as she returns with trinkets for him to hand out at the Water Gardens, he seems happy enough to have her in the citadel of Sunspear. Or at least keeps his own counsel.

Arianne shoves at her with her hip. "And nothing for me? For shame." She tosses her hair, pouting, but can't quite stop her mouth from curling up into a smirk.

"Now, now, did I say that?" Asha bends her arm, hauling the smaller woman in to nip that pout off her plush lips. When Arianne goes up on tiptoe to deepen the kiss, Asha pulls back a little to press their foreheads together. For a moment she closes her eyes, inhales deeply, letting the cloves-and-earth smell of her lover fill her nostrils, rich and warm.

It hits her, then, all at once. How long this last voyage has been. How soon she'll be departing again. She could never give up seafaring – Asha may never be a reaver again, but she's Ironborn. It's in her blood to crave the whip of a salty wind, the creak of the deck yawning beneath her boots, the sea wide and open around her, the _freedom_ of it. No, she could never live locked to solid ground, rooted in one place. And Arianne would never ask that of her, and that's just one of the reasons Asha loves her so.

But sometimes – sometimes she wishes it were different.

"Gods, I missed you, little viper," she breathes.

"I'm here. I'm here." Arianne's small hands are running over Asha's wind-tangled hair, down her wiry arms, firm and soothing, as though gentling a frightened animal. She presses into Asha, and even through the layers of linen and leather and silk between them, Asha can feel her. The weight of her full breasts, the way their hips slide together instinctively, knees interlocking. The heat of her – Arianne's always burned hotter than Asha, whose feet and fingers are cold to the touch even in the Summer Isles – right _there_. So alive.

"Tell me what you need," Arianne commands. The proud, imperious tone goes straight to Asha's head – and between her legs – and her breath catches for a second.

She's a captain, a queen aboard her ship, and she's never taken orders from anyone in her life. Except in Arianne's bed. And if they aren't there just yet, well, she can be forgiven. It's been so long. Months. An eternity. Gods, she can't stand it –

No. No. Their reunions are a thing of joy, time to appreciate the days they do spend together, not sadness for those spent apart.

"I just need –" she breaks off. Takes a deep breath and regains her composure. "I do have a gift for you, princess."

"Oh?"

"Yes." She leans back for a moment, reaches into her leather jerkin, down her cleavage, beside the dagger she still keeps there – and draws out a slim box of some deep red wood, holds it out to Arianne. "Here."

Arianne takes the box, and when she opens it, her face breaks into a broad smile. "Oh, beautiful. What craftsmanship."

Inside the box, resting on pale yellow velvet, is a pen, one of the glass sort that have replaced feather quills in Myr. Its vermilion surface is laid with intricate, fine scrollwork depicting snakes wrapped around it, and the whole thing is fashioned after a miniature spear. Asha commissioned it personally.

"You always say words may be mightier than swords – well, your cousins and I have our weapons, you ought to have your own." Asha buries her hands in Arianne's heavy black curls, lifts her hair to bare the elegant line of her neck, ducks close to press her lips to the place where her pulse beats in her throat.

She hears the box snap shut again, and then there's a hand in Asha's own hair, cupping the base of her skull possessively, holding her in place. Arianne lets out a faint murmur, her hips shifting in what isn't a buck – not quite yet. "It's almost as beautiful as you, sweeting."

Arianne's hand shifts, long nails tracing down Asha's neck, teasing under the collar of her linen shirt, before running down the curve of her spine to ghost over her ass. The touch is barely even a tease, but the anticipation is building in Asha already, bare toes curling into the sand.

When Arianne laughs, low and throaty, Asha can _feel_ it. "Mm. Now then, we have the best part of an hour before my father expects us at dinner – why don't you show me what else you can do with that mouth?"

She only takes Arianne's orders when she's in Arianne's bed, that's the rule – but, damn it all. Close enough. Asha lets go her lovers' hair, reaches down to wrap her arms tight around Arianne's thighs, just under the swell of her ass, lifts her up. Sweet-smelling dark hair tumbles over her own shoulders, her face nuzzled into the fine silk that barely covers those beautiful, ripe breasts. Fingers curl around her jaw, run through her hair, massaging fiercely at her scalp. Arianne's lips are parted, her eyes black and burning with desire.

"Your wish is my command, princess."


End file.
